


the road not taken

by hotdogluke



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Christmas if you squint, F/M, Some angst, The Boys Are Alive, a little alex/willie if you close one eye and look at it in the right lighting, but mostly just the song with a happy ending, childhood best friends to sort of (?) enemies to lovers, tis the damn season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28404246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdogluke/pseuds/hotdogluke
Summary: looks real good now/Or where she leaves her celebrity life in the big city to go home for the holidays, and apparently her estranged best friend-slash-neighbor is home, too. Juke. One shot.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 126





	the road not taken

**Author's Note:**

> based (loosely but also not loosely at all) on Taylor Swift's "'tis the damn season".

It’s funny how the meaning of words can change over time. Growing up, home for Julie meant beautiful chaos, her mother’s smile, entire days spent in their garage-slash-music studio. Home meant lemonade stands with her best friend in the summer while their parents chatted on one porch or the other, or lazy afternoons of mac ‘n’ cheese and apple slices and cartoons during the school year. It meant music: first learning and playing with her mother in the studio, and then eventually writing with her as well.

Home was the tree houses she and Luke built with their dads in their respective back yards, and the bridge between them supported by convenient branches stretching over their shared wall. It was singing along to Luke’s guitar playing for hours on end, until her voice was hoarse and he ran out of songs to play. Home was where she and Luke would snuggle up in her tree house in sleeping bags whenever he’d fight with his parents. It was where Julie’s mom had caught them one morning, and insisted that next time they sleep inside the house—and added that Dad didn’t need to know about it.

Home meant the strange fluttery feeling in her belly whenever she and Luke touched. It meant smiling at her phone in the dark as she and Luke stayed up into the wee hours of the morning texting or playing silly games on their phones. It meant meeting Luke’s sparkling eyes and immediately looking away, starting around middle school, and not quite knowing why. Home was that one night sophomore year after their school’s talent show, when Luke hugged her and told her she was incredible and she could swear by the look in his eyes he was going to try to kiss her, until his bandmates found them and made it a group hug.

Then, her junior year, home became darkness, emptiness, silence. Home was condolences and casseroles from friends and family and neighbors. Home was staring at the dark, empty garage and imagining she could hear her mother’s music and her voice drifting out from it. Home meant a distinct _lack_ of music—not from her mother, and not from her, either. She couldn’t play, couldn’t write, couldn’t sing, could hardly even stand to _listen_ to it, because her mother _was_ music, and it only made sense that a world without Rose Molina had to be a world without music as well.

Home meant next to nothing that year, because Julie couldn’t imagine anywhere feeling like home without her mother there.

Her senior year, home still wasn’t quite _home_ , but she was finding some meaning in the word again. Home was still her mother’s studio, where the memories would sometimes threaten to consume her until she wove them into a blanket to bring her comfort instead. Home was hearing her brother’s laugh again, seeing a little light returning to her father’s eyes, playing music again even though it felt like she was tearing a hole in her heart and in the very makeup of the Earth itself in order to bring music back to a world where her mother wasn’t there.

Home was listening to Luke’s band as they rehearsed in the garage, seeing the way playing music brought all of them to life. Home was Luke’s smile, and that little dance her heart did whenever that smile was aimed at her. It was his laugh as they sat in their old treehouses in the wee hours of the morning, and it was the way he held her when she needed it. Home meant falling back into herself, after a year of feeling like an empty shell. It meant realizing that some things didn’t change even after her mom’s death, like the way Luke would still climb onto the roof of her back porch and knock on her second-story window whenever he fought with his parents, and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms with her dad still none the wiser.

Then, when she won a manager and a record deal in a talent search contest she (and Luke’s band) entered after graduation, home became her little apartment in Hollywood. Home meant Flynn, her friend from high school turned roommate turned best friend (after a certain _other_ best friend stopped returning her calls). Then it became her much bigger house in the Hills when her debut album broke records, and her best friend still in the bedroom right across the hall from hers. Home was pajama dance parties and trashy reality TV and sharing everything with someone who was actually _happy_ for her. That’s what home still means to Julie, at twenty-one and living her dreams.

But.

Home is also still that house on the outskirts of L.A., with her dad and her brother and the memory of her mom; with the family pictures and scrapbooks and the old garage/studio out back.

When she goes _home_ for the holidays, it means her father’s homecooked meals and bickering with her brother and decorating the tree like when she was small. It means warmth and light and a little bit of melancholy sitting in its usual spot at her mom’s old seat at the dinner table. Home is reuniting with her old friends from high school and trying to push down the urge to ask Luke’s bandmates how he’s doing. Home is Alex’s gentle eyes and Reggie’s sweet smile.

It’s also empty tree houses and lying awake in her old room feeling like her bed is too big and too cold, plagued by phantom touches and whispers in her mind. Home is casting casual glances at the house next door every time she walks out to her car, as if she might see him on the porch even though Alex and Reggie told her years ago he got the hell out of his parents’ house as fast as he could and hasn’t spoken to his parents since. Home is immediately regretting the pang of her heart when she _doesn’t_ see him, and the quick redirecting of her thoughts before she enters into more painful territory.

Home is remembering the people who love her, and desperately trying to forget the ones who don’t.

* * *

She immediately knows something’s up when she meets Alex and Reggie for lunch the week before Christmas. Alex’s leg is bouncing like a hyperactive pogo stick and he won’t look her in the eyes, and Reggie isn’t talking at all. So after they order their food, she crosses her arms and leans back in her chair, looking between them in an expectant silence while she waits for one of them to crack.

“So, Julie,” Alex says after awkwardly clearing his throat, “have you had many run-ins with fans or paparazzi since you came home? I know that’s usually a bit of a struggle every year.”

Julie simply shrugs in response, glancing around their little table tucked into a corner to stay as hidden as possible from the public eye at their favorite diner from high school. Alex opens his mouth to say something else, but then Reggie’s phone buzzes on the table and Julie catches a glimpse of a familiar face on the screen before Reggie swipes it up and answers it.

“Hey,” Reggie says into the phone, glancing between Julie and Alex, who’s watching Reggie wide-eyed. “We’re at lunch with Julie right now. Is everything okay with your…uh, thing?” Reggie swallows and shrinks away from Julie’s narrowed eyes as she tries to decipher what’s going on with him and Alex and how Luke is involved. Reggie sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Because she’s our friend—” Reggie gets cut off and then rolls his eyes pointedly at Alex, whose cheeks turn pink when he catches Julie watching him. “Okay, well, me and Alex never felt that way.” He pauses as Luke says something. “Listen, buddy, I gotta go. Yeah, okay. Bye.”

“So, what was that about?” Julie asks.

“Luke’s just on edge because he’s spending Christmas with his parents—”

Reggie cuts himself off, wide-eyed, and covers his mouth with his hand. Alex rolls his eyes and shakes his head, looking as if he’d like to bang his forehead on the table a few times.

Julie’s mind races. “They’re speaking again?” she asks. “Wait, Luke is at his parents’ house? Why haven’t I seen his car?”

Alex presses his lips together. “He parks in the garage. His parents only have one car, and…he didn’t really want you to know he was there.”

Julie hates the way her stomach lurches. “He didn’t?”

Alex glances at Reggie helplessly, but, as usual, Reggie is no help at all. Alex sighs and leans forward a little, an apology written in his green eyes. “He’s still pretty upset about that talent contest thing, and you leaving—”

“I didn’t even leave the city! And I tried to convince Michelle to take on Sunset Curve, you know that! _He_ knows that!”

“I know,” Alex says gently. “We appreciate you trying. And we don’t blame you for taking the chance to live your dream. Deep down, I don’t think Luke blames you, either. I think he just doesn’t deal with his feelings well, and he had…a _lot_ of feelings going on around the time all that happened. And, I mean, obviously we were all a little jealous of you—happy for you, but still a little jealous—and Luke just couldn’t handle it.”

“That is—” Julie starts, but she’s cut off by the waitress bringing their food. She takes a deep breath and thanks the waitress with a smile, waiting until she’s out of earshot before continuing at a lower volume. “That is _not_ my fault.”

“I’m not saying it is. And, again, I’m not totally sure he’s even _mad_ at you. He just…doesn’t know how to be around you anymore.”

Julie frowns. “That’s not fair,” she complains, looking between the two boys. “We haven’t spoken in nearly three years. I _miss_ him.”

“He misses you, too,” Reggie pipes up. Alex looks at him, and he shrugs innocently. “What?” he asks. “We have deep conversations, too.”

“ _When_?” Alex asks.

“When you’re out with Willie,” Reggie says, frowning. “We get sad and lonely. Sometimes you just gotta talk it out and have a good hug.”

Now Alex frowns. “I like hugs.”

“You get more than hugs from Willie,” Reggie points out, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Enough,” Julie interrupts before Alex can respond. “So Luke really still wants nothing to do with me? He’s not over all of that after _three years_? We’ve been best friends our whole lives!”

Alex and Reggie look at each other, then at Julie again.

“Look, Jules, I know you’re gonna wanna go over there and confront him and talk about this, but you have to know that won’t end well. He’s stressed enough as it is spending the week with his parents and trying to repair their relationship. I promise you, he’ll come around. And besides, I’m pretty sure you have some old feelings to work through, too.” Alex raises his eyebrows at her knowingly, as if she’s supposed to understand what the hell he’s talking about. But before she can ask him to elaborate or even mention that she’s confused, Reggie changes the subject, and they don’t give her a chance to bring the conversation back around to Luke.

After their lunch, Julie goes home and spends the next couple of hours locked in her room, alternating between pacing, writing, and lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. It’s taking everything in her not to march over to the Pattersons’ and try to get Luke to talk to her, although a part of her wonders why she even wants to. If he’s holding a grudge out of jealousy because she got a record deal and Sunset Curve didn’t, that isn’t the kind of person she really wants to have in her life. But, judging from the breadcrumbs of Luke’s life that Alex and Reggie have given her over the years plus everything she knew about Luke growing up, it must go deeper than that.

So then why hasn’t he talked to her in three years?

“I wish you were here,” she says to the ceiling, imagining her mother listening to her from above. “You never would’ve let it get this far.”

Julie smiles sadly at the memory of her mother intervening in all of her fights with Luke over the years. No matter what the fight was about—whether it was a toy she swore he broke on purpose in second grade or him becoming fed up with her flaking out of all their plans after she got her first boyfriend in high school—her mom always saved the day and helped them remember that they loved each other. She would have them write themselves letters from the other person’s point of view, then write letters to each other describing their own feelings. Then she’d tell them to read those letters they wrote to each other out loud, calmly and without the other person interrupting. By the end of the whole process, they had both always cooled down and were able to truly _listen_ to each other, and they usually ended up hugging it out and feeling as good as new.

Logically, Julie knows that if her mother were here, that would probably be her advice, but her mother _isn’t_ here, so there’s really no way to be sure. Plus, she’s not about to melt her brain trying to figure out Luke’s point of view, especially when he probably wouldn’t even talk to her anyway. And she’s not too keen on delving into her own feelings about the whole thing because she’s kept them at arm’s length for this long and frankly, she’s a little afraid of what she might find.

But her imaginary mother doesn’t need to know all that, so Julie just crosses her arms and says, “If he isn’t writing those letters, then neither am I.”

In her mind’s eye, she sees her mom shake her head in exasperation and put her hands up, surrendering to Julie’s stubbornness and giving up on trying to convince her.

* * *

Despite knowing her all her life, about half of the attendees of the Molinas’ annual Christmas party ask her for a picture. Another quarter of them keep glancing at her longingly, as if they want to ask her but don’t want to bother her.

She begged Flynn to come keep her company and maybe scare some people away, but Flynn has her own family’s Christmas party to attend, conveniently on the same night. Apparently, December 22 is a popular party day.

“So, what’s on your list for Santa?” Reggie asks Carlos while Julie resists the urge to scan the room for the millionth time in search of a certain brown-haired, blue-eyed, petty son of a—

“I’m seventeen, dude,” Carlos says, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.

“And?” Reggie asks innocently.

“And Santa isn’t real.”

Reggie smiles and rests a hand on Carlos’s shoulder. “Sure he isn’t, buddy.”

“Anyway,” Alex pipes up before Carlos has the chance to crush Reggie’s dreams, “what do you want for Christmas, Carlos?”

Carlos rolls his eyes at Reggie, but then smiles at Alex’s question. “I asked for a car.”

“Any specific kind?” Alex asks.

“Honestly, anything is better than what I’m driving right now,” Carlos says. “My skateboard.” Then he wrinkles his eyebrows. “Hey, wasn’t Willie supposed to be here?”

Alex shakes his head. “He went to see his family in New Mexico for Christmas this year. But I’m sure he’ll be pumped to geek out over skateboards or whatever with you when he gets back.”

Carlos grins, but Julie doesn’t hear his retort. Her focus tunnels on the front door, where she recognizes Emily and Mitch Patterson walking in. She holds her breath, but the door closes behind them.

She tries not to let the ten-ton weight pulling her heart into her stomach show on her face as she exhales, but Reggie must notice it anyway because he squeezes her hand. She looks at him, and he cocks his head to the side just slightly with his eyebrows wrinkled together, a question in his eyes. She gives him a small smile and a little nod to let him know she’s okay. He purses his lips, as if he doesn’t quite believe her, but he squeezes her hand once more and lets go. Julie ducks her head and mutters an excuse to Alex and Carlos before rushing to the back door as the walls and bodies start to close in on her.

Once in the fresh air, she takes a few deep breaths. A cool winter breeze makes her skin prickle, but it’s a welcome reprieve from the heat inside the house. She glances behind her once and then walks to her old treehouse, climbing up the ladder and pulling herself up onto the little balcony that wraps around it.

Her feet crunch on the plastic tarp her dad keeps over the floor to protect the rug and sleeping bags from the elements as she reaches up to turn on the solar-powered lantern hanging from the ceiling. Then she crosses the small room and turns on the other lantern sitting on the little desk by one of the windows.

She pulls the tarps off the floor and the two beanbag chairs in the corner of the room, folding them and setting them off to the side. Then she inhales deeply the scent of wood, dust, plastic, and nostalgia as she looks around the room in the dim lighting.

Despite the soft Christmas music from the party drifting up to her, the old tree house _feels_ silent. Which is why the faint creaking of wood she knows she didn’t cause startles her, and she peeks out the second doorway, on the wall adjacent to the main entrance.

Sure enough, Luke Patterson is standing on the balcony of his old tree house with his guitar in one hand, looking at her. She can’t see him very well in the light from her lanterns and the moon, but that isn’t a smile on his face. She hears the strings of his guitar hit the wood as his hand tightens around the neck.

“Luke,” she manages, not recognizing her own voice.

“You’re supposed to be inside,” he says, and she recognizes _his_ voice like an old favorite song.

She swallows. “I, um, needed some air.” She steps out of the doorway and onto the balcony. “You’re back,” she says, not having to try too hard to feign her surprise. She didn’t realize seeing him again would be such a punch to the gut.

“I know Alex and Reggie told you.”

She purses her lips. “Well…how are you?”

“Don’t ask me that,” he says, narrowing his eyes. But instead of backing away like most people do when they’re angry, he steps onto the bridge, towards her. “We’re not gonna sit here and catch up and pretend like we’re okay, because we’re not.”

“We’re not,” she echoes, but it comes out as more of a gasp, because even though she knew they weren’t okay, hearing him say it so bluntly out loud to her face feels like being pushed off a cliff. Then, trying to ignore the traitorous tears in her eyes and the way her entire body is starting to shake, she lifts her chin.

“I tried,” she says, hoping he can’t hear the emotion in the back of her throat or see her lip quivering. “I asked my manager if she would listen to Sunset Curve, but she only represents female artists or bands with female leads. I asked her to make some calls, and I made calls of my own, and I did everything I could. You can’t _blame_ me for taking the opportunity to live my dream just because your opportunity hasn’t come yet.”

He sets his jaw and shakes his head, scrunching his nose up in the way he does when he’s fighting tears. “You left,” he says through gritted teeth, taking another step towards her.

“You moved to Hollywood too!”

“You left first! You left _me_!”

“I moved twenty minutes away!”

“With traffic, it’s at least an hour!”

“Not if you take side streets!”

“It’s still just as long!”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I feel like we’re getting off track here!”

When she opens her eyes, he’s glaring at her, his chest rising and falling heavily and his free hand clenched into a fist at his side. And when a couple tears escape her eyes and roll slowly down her cheeks, she isn’t quite sure if they’re the result of frustration or hurt or longing for her best friend instead of whatever unrecognizable version of Luke is standing before her.

She sees the change in his face when he registers that she’s crying, and she wants to turn away from him, but he takes the last few steps across the bridge until he’s standing on her balcony in front of her. He lifts his hand as if to wipe her tears, but when she looks up at him, he purses his lips and drops his hand back to his side.

“I miss you,” she admits quietly, blushing like she’s just confessed something much deeper. He looks down, and her heart pounds against her chest so hard she’s pretty sure it’ll leave internal bruising.

“When you left, Julie…it felt like you were saying the chance at fame was more important to you than I was. And most of me knows that was never true and if it was the other way around I would do the same thing, and I was always proud of you and happy for you, but…a big part of me was hurt.” He looks at her again. “I just can’t…”

“Be a mature adult?” she suggests with a sniffle.

She expects him to get angry again, but he just runs a hand through his hair and sighs, looking off to the side. At least he knows she’s right.

“I’m obviously not great at dealing with—well, any kind of emotion, really, but especially mixed ones or lots of them at once. And with you, plus all the shit with my parents, plus my general state of bottling everything up until it explodes, I was feeling all of that. I guess I just couldn’t handle it, so I cut you out of my life altogether. And then my parents.”

“All this to say you miss me too?” she asks.

This time she sees the faintest hint of a smile as he rolls his eyes. “Something like that.”

Her heart flutters with a dangerous amount of hope. She cocks her head to the side as the song inside the house changes, and then she takes a deep breath and holds out her hand.

“Dance with me,” she says.

He hesitates, and in the dim lighting she sees his eyes flickering with his inner conflict. But slowly, he sets his guitar down against the wooden railing of her balcony and takes her hand.

She steps backwards until she’s in the middle of her little treehouse, dragging him with her, and then pulls his hand behind her to rest on her back. She drapes her arms around his neck, and he swallows and wraps his other arm around her waist, interlacing his fingers on her lower back.

“You’re fixing things with your parents,” she notes.

He shakes his head a little, as if coming out of a daze, and clears his throat. “Um, yeah. Trying to, at least.”

He takes one of her hands and twirls her under his arm, and between one second and the next she’s transported three years into the past.

After their senior prom, they had climbed up here and danced just like this to music playing from Luke’s phone. He was still in his tux, but with his tie now loose around his neck, and she was still in her purple dress (which, according to a comment he made when he first saw her in it, made her look like a princess), but barefoot. His boutonniere and her matching corsage were wilted, his hair was even messier than it had been at the beginning of the night, and she was positive her makeup was smeared, but she didn’t care and she was pretty sure he didn’t either. They were all smiles back then, reminiscing in hushed tones about the night, and then he had taken her by surprise and twirled her.

“We should’ve won Prom King and Queen,” she said, a butterfly or ten erupting in her belly at the way his eyes were sparkling even in the dim lighting.

He grinned, his tongue poking between his teeth. “We would’ve rocked that dance _way_ better than Nick and Carrie.”

“At least we got Prince and Princess.”

“Second place is just another way to say loser, Jules.”

“But we got fun plastic crowns out of it.”

“This is true. But I told you, you had the princess thing down before we even left the house.”

She hoped he couldn’t see her blushing, but the way his smile widened told her he definitely did. Then he started leaning in, and his lips brushed against hers, and he froze there, both of them inhaling sharply. They were on the precipice of something big, and he had to know that as well as she did, and apparently neither of them was sure they were ready to take that leap. She knew then that if he kissed her, that would be it, her entire future determined by that one moment. She had always imagined her future being Luke Patterson, but now that it was on the verge of actually _starting_ and being _real_ , she was terrified. A part of her knew that she should just close the distance, seal the deal, and let herself completely fall for him because that was what she truly wanted, but another part of her panicked because they were still _so young_ and no one should be able to see a future that clearly at her age.

Something similar must’ve been going through his head as they stood there, frozen in a single moment with his lips just barely ghosting hers, because he pulled away and cleared his throat. Her lips were still tingling where his should have been.

“I…”

“That didn’t happen,” she offered airily, as if she wasn’t reeling after seeing her entire life flash before her eyes because of one almost-kiss with her best friend.

“What didn’t happen?” he joked, a slight tremor in his voice the only evidence that he was recovering too. And that was that.

Julie forces herself back into the present, refocusing on Luke’s not-smiling face. But something in the way his eyes seem to come back into focus at the same time and then darken tells her that he just might be remembering that night too.

“We’re still not okay,” he says quietly, even as his eyes flick down to her lips and he starts dipping his head towards her.

She shakes her head slightly, tightening her arms around his neck and rising up on her tiptoes. “That’s just semantics,” she murmurs as she lets her eyes flutter closed and his lips find hers.

Kissing him feels like a shot of caffeine straight into her bloodstream. As his arms tighten around her waist, she wonders if he can feel her entire body buzzing with the _rightness_ of this kiss. But then he pulls away, and when she looks at him his eyebrows are scrunched together and his face is cherry red. His lips are tinted the color of her lipstick

“It is not just semantics,” he says.

“’Okay’ is relative,” she tells him, standing on her tiptoes again. “We can pretend. I leave soon after Christmas anyway, and then you can go back to refusing to deal with your emotions.”

His face relaxes as he watches her lean towards him. “Julie…,” he whispers, starting to lean in too. But then he shakes his head quickly and stops. “Julie— _Jules_ ,” he insists, grabbing her upper arms and holding her at arm’s length so her arms fall to her sides. “We can’t just pretend our shit away. I thought you wanted to be mature adults.”

“I’m willing to make an exception.”

He lets go of her and runs both hands through his hair. “No,” he says. “That was a mistake.”

She rolls her eyes. “Luke, come _on_ ,” she says. “How long are you gonna keep using me as your emotional scapegoat?”

“I am not using you as—”

“Whatever,” she interrupts. “Fine. That was a mistake. And you know what? Maybe you’re right. I don’t want any relationship with someone who refuses to put in the work of dealing with his feelings.”

“Don’t _whatever_ me,” he says. “You’re the one who left.”

“Oh my god,” she mutters, walking towards the entrance to the treehouse. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

“And now you’re leaving again.”

She looks at him. “If you ever decide to stop being such an immature assface, I still miss my best friend, and I’d really like him back.”

She leaves him standing in her tree house, finally looking like maybe he might be in the wrong.

* * *

In the coming days, as Julie replays the kiss and the subsequent fight in her mind, she comes to a realization. It’s not one of those shocking epiphanies that leaves you breathless and unable to think straight anymore. No, this is one of those realizations that, if anything, is calming, like puzzle pieces falling delicately into place; less like a realization at all and more like the acceptance of something inevitable that was always right on the edges of your consciousness.

She loves him.

She always has, for as long as she can remember. And if she’s being honest, she’s always known it, too, but it was just one of those things she never really gave much thought to. The sky is blue. The earth orbits the sun. Julie Molina is in love with Luke Patterson.

But now that she is giving thought to it, confirming it to herself in her mind and allowing herself to fully _feel_ everything along with it, it’s almost a relief. Maybe she was doing some emotion-bottling of her own; maybe this is what Alex was talking about when he said she had feelings to work through, too.

So when Luke knocks at her door with an apology in his eyes and a monologue on his lips, she finds herself speaking first.

“I talked to my manager and my label,” she says. “After the last time we talked, I got an idea. Michelle only represents female artists or bands with women as leads. She said that she’d be willing to consider a band rather than just me as a solo act. The label liked the idea and said we could record a demo. We’d have to rename Sunset Curve and I would have to technically be the lead singer, but the spotlight is big enough for the both of us and I figure—”

He closes the distance between them, an awestruck smile on his face that makes her heart flutter in her chest, and grabs her face and kisses her, no hesitation this time. Suddenly it’s senior prom all over again as she feels her entire life falling into place except this time she isn’t scared at all.

He pulls away and presses his forehead to hers. “Yes,” he says quietly. “And I’m sorry. I’d still be sorry even if you didn’t do this for me. I was stupid to waste three years not talking to you and almost let an entire lifetime of being best friends go down the drain just because I’m bad with feelings.”

He kisses her again before she has a chance to respond, and she grins as she wraps her arms around him. But then he pulls away again, and goddammit she is going to smack this man if he doesn’t just _make out with her already_.

“Rename the band?” he asks, trailing kisses along her jawline and then down her neck.

“I came up with some ideas. ‘Julie and the Phantoms’ is my favorite,” she says, breathless and flustered.

“I love it. The guys’ll love it too.”

“Let’s not talk about the guys right now?” she suggests, pulling him inside her (thank god) empty house. “Even better,” she adds as he pulls the door shut behind him and she feels his lips curve into a smile, “let’s not talk at all right now.”

“I love that idea,” he says into the soft spot under her jaw. But then he leans back and meets her eyes. “I love _you_ , Julie Molina.” Her head spins. “Basically since the day I met you. Whenever that was.”

“Pretty sure we met at a Mommy and Me class when we were one,” she manages.

He smiles, evidently seeing something promising in her eyes. “Since then.”

“I love you too,” she manages, dizzy with emotion and mesmerized by the stars in his eyes. “Now, I’m gonna kiss you again, and if you pull away this time to say something stupid I’m gonna kick your ass.”

He laughs and she practically melts at the sound, and then he kisses her before she gets the chance. But he must take her threat to heart, because this time he doesn’t pull away.

It’s funny how the meaning of words may not change as much as you think. Even though Julie has come up with about a million different meanings of _home_ throughout her life, there’s really only one meaning that’s stuck with her no matter what.

Home is Luke’s smile, the way his cheeks dimple and his tongue peeks out between his teeth and his nose scrunches up. Home is his eyes, like warm, turquoise oceans that sparkle whenever he looks at her. Home means being in his arms, strong and safe, always there to support her when the world is crumbling beneath her feet. Home means Luke’s music, whether that’s his guitar or his voice or his laughter or his cheers for her. Home means happiness and comfort and laughter and music and that feeling of everything _right_ falling into place.

Home means Luke Patterson, and it always, _always_ will.

**Author's Note:**

> i know christmas is over but i procrastinated. i hope everyone had a happy holiday, and wishing you all a happy new year :)


End file.
